The Disappearing Dwarf (27 page)

‘That’s right,’ Jonathan said. ‘He was seen four days ago in the company of a man named Sikorsky. Have you heard of him?’

‘Heard of him!’ Escargot cried, looking at Jonathan in surprise. ‘Of course I’ve heard of him. Everyone in the cafe knows who he is. Everyone except you lads.’

‘And one of these years we’ll find out,’ the Professor said. ‘Then we’ll know too.’

‘I’ll give you some clues,’ Escargot began. ‘He’s short. Tolerably short. About Gump’s size here. He wears a smash hat with a broad brim and carries a stick and has a patch over one eye. And he smokes a pipe that ain’t like these pipes you’re puffing on here. Not by a sight. Fifteen years ago he stole that filthy globe from me after I stole it from the bunjo man, and
he
stole it anyway from the Light Elves and didn’t know what it was. I thought I did. Fancy that. All these years the joke was on me.’

‘Selznak!’ Jonathan shouted, the truth flooding in upon him. ‘Sikorsky and Selznak are the same person!’

‘That’s a fact,’ Escargot said. ‘If a man lives in two worlds he can have two names. I’ve used more than one myself. Sometimes it’s necessary. Throws the hounds off the scent. Was it Sikorsky who blew up your ship?’

‘So we think,’ Jonathan said. ‘He was after Cap’n Binky’s coffee.’

‘If he wanted Cap’n Pinky’s coffee he’d take it.’

‘Binky,’ Gump corrected.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Binky, it is, not Pinky. Cap’n Binky.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Escargot said. ‘So you figure he wanted that coffee so bad he tried to blow it to bits? That’s something. What I think is that he’s leading you lads by the nose.’

‘We’ve got to tell Miles about this,’ Bufo said. ‘We’ve got to be on our way now that we know what’s going on.’

‘Where to?’ the Professor asked. ‘It doesn’t make much difference as far as I can see. We should have figured that all out days ago – the Dwarf in the fog up at Tweet Village, the old woman showing up on the riverboat that night. It was plain as day and none of us saw it. Not even Miles.’

‘She’s here too?’ Escargot apparently knew what old woman was being referred to.

‘Yes,’ Jonathan said. ‘She keeps popping up. But I’m not sure Miles hasn’t suspected. He’s onto something, that’s for sure. He’s known more than he’s let on all along.’

Escargot nodded. ‘You lads need a hand, Miles or no Miles. I’ve got a little business to attend to here in town, but it shouldn’t take me long. If I could be of any service –’

‘Don’t go out of your way,’ the Professor put in, who, Jonathan knew, suspected Escargot’s motives. Jonathan, however, was hoping that Escargot would do exactly that, whatever his motives. One Escargot, especially an Escargot with a submarine, seemed to him to be worth a half-dozen of almost anyone else.

‘Dooly lad,’ Escargot said, ‘run down to the ship, if you will, and pull out those boxes of clocks and that tub of eyeballs. And bring the you-know-what.’

Dooly began winking and nodding and carrying on as if he had a twitch in his eye. He made a circle out of the thumb and forefinger of his right hand and gave Escargot the high-sign, winking once again before dashing off.

‘What in the world was that business?’ Gump asked, puzzled over Dooly’s histrionics. Jonathan wondered the same thing. Apparently Dooly was, in his way, being very secretive, and Jonathan knew it was bad form to press the issue.

‘Lad must have the shakes,’ Escargot said in answer to Gump’s question.

Most of the early afternoon was taken up going about town with Escargot, lugging his strange wares. They visited Dr Chan again, this time to deliver a dozen of Escargot’s unlikely but oddly accurate squid clocks and no end of floating octopi and eyeballs and ocean herbs and fish skeletons. To hurry matters along, Escargot had Gump and Bufo and Dooly dashing back to the ship for fresh supplies, then meeting up with him at some agreed-upon spot.

After the visit to Dr Chan’s, Jonathan and the Professor excused themselves and set out in search of Miles, who had, as Jonathan suspected, been into the curiosity shop that morning, seriously buying a quantity of potions, herbs, and dried bats, and quizzing the doctor about Sikorsky. The, news rather took the hurry out of their finding Miles, since his conversation with Dr Chan would certainly have alerted him to Sikorsky’s identity. But Jonathan and the Professor were both stricken with a new sense of alarm, and since Miles was, in a way, their general, they were anxious for new orders. They both realized, though, as the Professor had first pointed out back at the cafe, that while a great deal had been revealed, they had little or no more direction as a result of it.

They couldn’t find Miles. He’d been to the post office and, according to the clerk, had picked up a number of responses and then had left a note. ‘Am running errands,’ it said, ‘and may not return until tomorrow. Be patient. Squire seen day before yesterday. Be ready to travel tomorrow
P.M.
’

The note satisfied the two of them only because it seemed to imply that Miles was finally making real progress. The news of the Squire having been seen was decidedly good. If he was in town four days ago, and then again two days ago, it was entirely possible, even likely, that he was
still
in town, maybe having a late lunch that very moment at a cafe on Stickley Street or in a tavern on High Street.

That possibility sent the two of them up and down streets and avenues for another three hours, poking into taverns, showing the handbill around, quizzing people. At about five o’clock they made one last stop at the post office and found nothing.

When they dragged themselves back to the inn a half hour later, Escargot was in high spirits. He’d had a successful day of it and had even managed to give Gump, Bufo, and Dooly a bit of money for their troubles. To celebrate, he bought Jonathan and the Professor a pint of ale. All of them sat down to dinner shortly thereafter, and for the space of ten minutes there was no conversation at all, only the clinking of silverware against plates and an occasional, ‘Pass the potatoes.’

The Professor was the lightest eater of them all, being aware of his weight for health reasons. As soon as he finished, he once again drew out the worthless treasure map as if convinced that they had overlooked something in it, something that would make sense of the muddled and missing street names.

When he held up the map, Dooly choked on a bite of pudding, and Bufo had to whack him on the back a few times. ‘Is that a map, your honor?’ Dooly was very respectful when he talked and had a fine imagination when it came to people’s names.

‘It pretends to be,’ the Professor said.

‘It looks like one to me,’ said Dooly, craning over it to get a better look. ‘I’ve seen a few such maps, I have. Had it all explained to me. There’s two kinds of maps, you see – if I might go into detail, sir – that a person might care to own. The one, you see, is for going about town if you don’t know where you are. The other one is for finding treasures.’ Dooly waited politely for a response.

‘That certainly seems accurate,’ the Professor said.

‘This one here, if you’ll pardon my carrying on, is a treasure map on account of the X right there.’ And Dooly pointed a finger at the uninformative X. It seemed as if Escargot had become aware of the conversation for the first time. As he forked up a mouthful of food, he took a look across the table to see what Dooly was chattering about, and in the process stabbed himself in the cheek, losing most of the food onto his shirt.

He looked from the map to Dooly, then from Dooly to the map and back again, scowling more fiercely with each turn of his head and idly smearing at the goop on the front of his shirt with a fork. ‘Maps is it?’ he asked finally, more of Dooly than anyone else. ‘It’s come to this, then?’

Dooly launched into a series of elaborate hand signals. He scratched his ear wildly, pointing over his shoulder toward the stairs with an extended thumb while raising and lowering his eyebrows. Then he winked hugely. Gump and Bufo, as a lark, set in immediately to follow Dooly’s example. First Bufo began winking both eyes together, over and over. Then Gump thumbed his nose cheerfully back at Bufo and crossed his eyes. The Professor, looking up from his map in the middle of their histrionics, could make nothing of it at all. Jonathan shrugged at him and shook his head. Escargot, however, nodded suddenly at Dooly and peered across to have a closer look at the Professor’s map.

Gump and Bufo continued making faces at each other, wiggling their ears, puffing out their cheeks and flapping their clasped hands around like bats. The innkeeper, coming in to clear away plates, caught Bufo in the act of shoving a finger into each ear, swelling his cheeks, clamping his eyes shut, and hissing through pursed lips as if he were acting the part of an exploding fizz bomb.

‘Is your friend all right?’ the innkeeper asked as he picked up Gump’s plate and silverware.

‘No,’ Gump said. ‘He’s having a fit. The sea air has an effect on his brain pan.’

Bufo opened his eyes at the sound of the innkeeper’s voice and made a weak pretense at having been merely smoothing down his hair. ‘Good food, this,’ he said in a stalwart, knowing tone. ‘My compliments to the chef. Very superior.’

‘Thanks,’ the innkeeper said, giving him a look. ‘Are you feeling better?’

‘Tiptop.’ Bufo took a deep breath or two and thumped on his chest. ‘This fellow here, though, seems to have cast a dollop of gravy onto the front of his shirt.’ He pointed at Escargot, who by then had gotten round to dabbing at the stain with the corner of a cloth napkin.

‘Would you like a bit of soap, sir?’ the inkeeper asked.

Escargot stared hard at Bufo, who had begun to lecture Gump about facial muscles. ‘No,’ Escargot said slowly, ‘I’m saving this for lunch tomorrow.’

Jonathan was afraid that Escargot wasn’t in the mood for larks, and he decided that a quick change of subjects was necessary. It turned out otherwise, however, for Escargot promptly forgot both his shirt and Bufo and turned once again to the Professor. ‘Have you tried this map out yet?’

‘Yes we have. It’s worthless.’

‘There was no treasure?’

‘There was no way to find the treasure,’ Jonathan put in. ‘The map is only half-complete. They might as well have written a note on a post card: “Look for a treasure in Landsend.” ’

‘Is that so?’ Escargot asked. ‘It’s none of my business, of course, but just for the sake of curiosity, where did you lads find this map? It wasn’t in Balumnia, I’ll warrant.’

‘No,’ said the Professor, ‘it wasn’t.’

‘And you’ve had it for about six months now, waiting for a chance to use it.’

‘Nope,’ Jonathan told him, ‘we haven’t had it two weeks, but you’re pretty much correct anyway, if I follow your drift. Two weeks ago the Professor and I went back to Hightower Ridge to have a look around. That was before we heard about the Squire. We found this in the cellar. When the Squire disappeared into Balumnia, we had the opportunity to try the map out. But as I said, nothing came of it.’

Escargot sat for a moment thinking. ‘I’m not sure I like all this happenstance. I get suspicious when things fall out in patterns. But maybe I’m foolish. Maybe I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth here.’

‘A horse?’ Dooly asked.

‘That’s just a saying, lad.’

‘Oh,’ Dooly said. ‘A saying. Of course.’

Escargot excused himself and went off up the stairs. When he popped back down,
he
had a map – the seeming twin of the one in front of the Professor. When the maps were laid out side by side, however, they were clearly different. Although they concerned the same area, the configurations of streets weren’t the same. Those streets which appeared on Escargot’s map were absent on the other. And the alleys and cross streets that hadn’t appeared on the map belonging to Jonathan and the Professor were plainly inked in on Escargot’s map. It didn’t take but a moment to figure it all out. The Professor laid one map atop the other, grasped them along either side, and held the superimposed maps in the air in front of a lamp.

‘ Partners again.’ Escargot smiled.

‘I should say.’ The Professor seemed this time to be genuinely happy about tossing in with Escargot. Gump, Bufo, and Dooly began pointing at the map and debating what tools to bring along.

‘We’ll need shovels,’ Bufo said.

‘And picks!’ Gump cried.

‘And wheelbarrows!’ Dooly shouted. ‘About ten of ‘em. That should do for starters.’

Gump snatched a chunk of gristly meat from Jonathan’s plate in order to feed it to Ahab before the innkeeper returned to finish clearing the table. He paused, however, and said to Dooly, ‘Ten of them?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Dooly insisted. ‘They’re in the book.’

‘But will ten be enough, is what I mean.’

Dooly reconsidered. ‘No. We’ve got to have an abundance. Two at least just for diamonds. Let me calculate this.’ Dooly pulled at the fingers of his left hand. ‘Grandpa,’ he asked, ‘how many wheelbarrows of diamonds do you reckon we’ll find?’

‘Plan on six.’ Escargot was studying the two maps along with Jonathan and the Professor.

‘Six, then. And three for pearls, three for rubies, five for em’ralds, two for jewelry and gold, and a dozen or so for stick candy. What is that, about thirty?’